Comment by yxhuvud
3 days ago
Again, more players in the market (both batteries and the renewables they enable) and the base fact that batteries pull prices toward the mean means that if anything, they would be exactly one of the mechanisms to avoid manufactured scarcities.
In many countries, energy production was (and still is) owned by the countries and power prices are regulated. In cases of total system failures (eg. look at ukraine), power usage is restricted by shutting down different parts of the country at different times, so your area has power from 4pm to 6pm, other area has it from 6pm to 8pm, etc, industry gets partially shut down, partially works at night if it's needed. Everybody gets to cook and wash in their timeslots, and the rest of the time, they're equally without power.
In case of some failure of the system you're proposing, the prices would skyrocket, the poor would not get power at all, and the rich would have power all the time but for a very high price. Economically speaking, that's great for investors in batteries and supporting systems, socially speaking, it's a horible world to live in. And the system is very unstable already, in portugal it already failed horribly not long ago.
Why would this specific application of this type of market be immune to rent seekers, manufactured scarcity, wasting or withholding resources for profit, oligopolies and so on?
What makes this application of this social regime so different from e.g. food or medicine?